


Stargazing

by madelinescribbles



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Dav Has Two Things In Common With Me? Now He IS Me., Davenport Character Study, Gen, Mentions of Anxiety, Pre-Voidfish, minor mention of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:45:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madelinescribbles/pseuds/madelinescribbles
Summary: 70 years into his 3-month journey, Captain Drew Davenport stares at the stars and thinks about constants.





	Stargazing

**Author's Note:**

> hnnng i'm so nervous about posting this but the discord told me to yeet it out here so i did.

The stars are probably something he should be sick of by now, all things considered.

The catch is, they tend to be different in every cycle. The inconsistencies range from off by a few degrees to entire star clusters trillions of lightyears too close. One year could be so nearly black that it seemed the world below was constantly falling into a void. The next year the sky would be littered with nearby galaxies or supernovas exploding in bright blues and reds across the night. Yet in the next year, there were so few stars in the sky that the handful that  _ were _ visible were worshipped as gods by the people below.

The first two cycles, he attempted to chart the constellations in his free time, unaware that he was on a time limit. Ever since it became clear that the Hunger was going to be a recurring threat, he abandoned the practice.

But not the stargazing itself.

This cycle would be one of the better ones for celestial cartography; the sky was littered with twinkling dots, but not too many that they overlapped or became obscured, as in some cycles where bursts of colored gas painted half the sky from a few light years away. No, this world’s stars were distant, yet visible. Mysterious but uniform lights in the void, like holes poked through black construction paper.

Almost like the stars from home, but in the wrong pattern.

Captain Drew Davenport feels anxious.

There is no reason to be anxious. They have another 7 months before the Hunger would even potentially arrive, and the Light is already secured. The planet below is sparsely inhabited, and the few civilizations they’ve managed to find are hospitable, so his crew is in no danger. Everything is fine. But his heart still pounds rapidly in his chest without justification.

Perhaps it’s the nature of his existence for the next hypothetical eternity. Constantly running. Carrier pigeon for a mysterious ball of power with no receiving party. Danger looming every few months with no conceivable end.

But he knows that’s not entirely it.

He’s always had chronic anxiety. It tends to flare up whenever he thinks. Which, as a conscious creature, is usually always. It’s not ideal, and some moments are worse than others, but he has become extremely skilled at controlling his perpetual fight-or-flight instincts. In the last few years before his final mission, he often received compliments for his ability to handle high-stress situations.

(He wasn’t actually good at it, he just managed to push the anxiety into a mental reservoir to be released in the form of a panic attack an hour or so later. But the military didn’t need to know that.)

So the pounding in his chest as he lays alone on the roof of the Starblaster isn’t existential dread, it’s a looming sentiment from a few lifetimes ago. From before he understood his life to be a series of applied escape maneuvers. Before he realized the only world he ever knew was gone. Before he begged to Captain a mission beyond the planar system. Before he joined the Institute. Before he climbed through the ranks as a naval pilot. Before he suffered through boot camp. Before he graduated high school. Before his father died in front of him. Before he knew he would never be happy in one place for the rest of his life.

The anxiety was a constant in every life Drew Davenport chose for himself, and those he didn’t. For a while he assumed the stars would be too, but the sky above him now begged to differ.

These ones certainly did look similar, though. The big and little dippers are somewhat further apart than they should be, and the little handle has a few extra stars in there, but they’re identifiable, and that’s a comfort. Delphinus, his personal favorite, is intact, but a bit fainter than at home. Libra has far too many stars on one side. Gemini is missing a twin.

The nervous ache in his chest tightens. He continues to ignore it.

When he was a kid, he used to look forward to the time in his life when his anxiety went away. A nondescript time as an adult where he was successful and socioeconomically comfortable enough to not have to worry about anything important.

He lets out a huff of laughter to himself at the thought. He’s technically both of those things now, unless you get hung up on the fact that he technically lives outside of any socioeconomic system.

But it was such an important belief for a long time. It was why he joined the Navy – to achieve success and maybe grow a backbone. He managed to achieve both of those, too, but the anxiety remains concealed, not eradicated.

He thought about Puller and West, his Navy buddies. Both apparently dead now. He wonders where they were when it happened. He assumes Puller stabbed the Hunger with that fucking pocket knife at least 20 times before going down; she refused to admit that it was ridiculous to keep it on her in civvies. West likely had no idea what was happening, as usual. Probably assumed it was an earthquake; he was unaware of the hard kill of an enemy missile 200 feet from the deck for several days until Puller mentioned it offhand.

All these years later, and the grief is still intangible to him. Kind of hard to feel the gravity of something that large, especially when there’s no, well, proof.

Granted, the Hunger was pretty fucking tangible, and plenty of proof, but it’s so… unfathomable. Impossible to wrap his head around. It’s big enough to  _ eat other planes _ . It’s an uncomfortable level of abstract for such an immediate and powerful enemy.

All those people just… aren’t there.

He feels vaguely bereaved, but it’s never very immediate. Like he’s feeling the loss through frosted glass.

There’s no routine to trigger the feeling that something is missing. When his father died, he was reminded by an empty chair at dinner. But on a multi-dimensional quest, there’s no constant to remind him of those he lost.

Except the stars, apparently, but those are less of a constant and more of an independent variable.

He vaguely wonders if he would ever think about home if he didn’t have such a complex knowledge of celestial navigation. Probably not. He’s not like the others in that way. Magnus and Barry both had large families on their plane. Merle had a parish. Lup has such a keen sense of sympathy for others that it’s impossible for her to forget about the loss, even if she had no family there of her own. Taako has Lup to remind him. Even Lucretia, though mostly alone like him, aspired to have her writings about the journey published. Now she records without a purpose.

A few cycles ago, he asked her why she even bothered anymore, since no one back home would ever read it anyway. She got defensive and refused to answer. He feels bad for pointing it out; it seems to be a method of processing grief for her.

Which is good. They all have ways of coping. Some (Merle, Lucretia) better than others (Taako, himself).

“Coping” is a generous word for what he does. He stargazes on the roof of the ship when his mental cocktail of anxiety and PTSD give him insomnia, and pretends he’s fine otherwise.

The more he looks at these misaligned stars, the closest thing to a second constant he gets for the rest of eternity, the more anxious he becomes. He never said the stargazing was a  _ cure _ for the insomnia.

“Captain?”

He jumps slightly at the sudden break in silence.

“Are you up there?” Lucretia calls, quieter this time.

He leans over the lip of the roof, peeking onto the deck, where she stands, shivering under the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“How did you guess?” he grins slightly, but can’t hide the tiredness he feels.

“I know you, Davenport,” her mouth pulls into the same exhausted smile, “You do this every January.”

“Oh.”

It’s not rude or dismissive. Just acknowledgement. He rolls back over to stare at the stars again.

“Ursa Major’s head is missing on this plane,” he tells her.

“I did notice that. Don’t tell Magnus; he might cry.”

He lets out a snort of laughter. There are a few moments of comfortable silence before he suspects the cold gets the better of her.

“Coming in, Captain?”

It’s asked in such a way that “no” is a viable option, but he also knows Lucretia would stay awake all night waiting if he refused.

“I’ll be down in a moment,” he replies, “Did you make tea?”

“You know I did.”

He smiles to himself as the door shuts below him. Lucretia hates tea. She made it specifically for him.

He takes one last look at the askew night sky before sitting up and lowering the rope ladder.

Maybe he should retract his previous statement. The stars are not the closest thing to a second constant on this eternal quest.

Across this sky, Delphinus fades, Libra is tipped, Gemini is without its other half, Ursa Major loses its head, Ophiuchus is missing an arm, the Southern Triangle is only a line, and the Argo Navis is so scattered that it’s barely recognizable. They’re not even remotely consistent; they change every year now.

It doesn’t matter. 

Right now, below deck, his crew are the same as they’ve always been. Maybe some things change; Lucretia has hardened, Taako is less empathetic to new planes, Merle is barely around for long…

But Lucretia still makes the tea she hates, Taako still collects every velvet crop top hoodie or purple sparkly platform shoe he finds, Merle still builds the garden of eden in his cabin, Magnus still does surprise “security tests” in the middle of the night, Lup still sets the bathroom on fire every week, and Barry still blushes when she thanks him for putting it out. They’re all here. Below him. Around him. Supporting him. Through every cycle.

Grief may change them as much as the night sky, but unlike this planes’ stars, they’re the same crew he knows from home.

And when he thinks about that, for the first time in his entire life, Captain Drew Davenport feels a little less anxious.

**Author's Note:**

> this was personal to me in a few ways, so thank you for reading <3\. all kudos and comments will be gushed over in excess.


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